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The Soldier's Seduction
Jane Godman


From the front lines to unexpected romance—and danger—in small-town Wyoming
After a war zone bomb nearly destroyed Bryce Delaney, he’s worked hard to hide his scars. Back in his Wyoming hometown, he can pretend the nightmares don’t exist. But when a secretive, beautiful new woman in town disappears, Bryce’s protective instincts put him on the front lines again.
Wanted for murder and on the run under an alias, former A-list actress Steffi Grantham can’t return to her life until she clears her name. It’s her boss, Bryce, to the rescue, but desire ties them together, and she’s forced to make a choice that could cost them both. Trusting the wrong man once before almost stole her freedom. Now it might take her life.
Bryce’s laugh vibrated through her body. “Has anyone ever told you that you are the most stubborn person in the whole world?”
“Apart from you?”
“Apart from me.”
She nodded. “Yes.”
“I’d like to meet them.”
You never will. The thought jerked her back into reality. “I’ll be fine now, Bryce. You can go. Thanks for your help.”
“Yeah, like that’s going to happen.” The sarcasm in his voice was withering. “I’m just going to walk out of here and leave you when you can’t even crawl to your own bed.”
“You don’t have any choice. I don’t want you here.” With a determined effort, Steffi pushed herself away from him and tried to sit up straight. It was a mistake. Behind the tinted lenses, the edges of her vision went black. Everything swam out of focus. She heard Bryce call her name in alarm and the last thing she felt was his strong arms catching her...
* * *
Sons of Stillwater: Danger lurks in a small Wyoming town
Dear Reader (#u4aa186bc-28f6-5553-bed8-42ac5f27d921),
The Soldier’s Seduction is the second book in the Sons of Stillwater series, and it tells the story of Bryce, the youngest Delaney brother.
Stillwater is a small Wyoming city, set in the cradle of some beautiful mountain scenery. In Stillwater, everyone knows everyone else’s business...or they think they do. On the surface the town is all laid-back Western charm. But scratch beneath the surface and nothing is what is seems.
Bryce attempts to disguise the trauma of what happened to him in Afghanistan by continuing with his daily routine. Stillwater allows him to hide in plain sight, until a new employee turns his routine upside down.
Steffi Grantham is a thorn in Bryce’s side from day one. Belligerent and uncooperative, she still manages to be the only person who makes him feel alive again.
When Bryce discovers Steffi’s true identity, he comes to her aid, and their adventure takes them across the country on a search that brings them face-to-face with danger and passion and forces them both to confront their fears.
I loved writing these characters. They were both badly hurt by their pasts, and they really needed to find each other! Giving them their happy ending was one of the most satisfying things I’ve done as a writer.
I’d love to hear from you and find out what you think of Bryce and Steffi’s story. You can contact me at www.janegodmanauthor.com (http://www.janegodmanauthor.com/), on Twitter, @JaneGodman (https://twitter.com/janegodman), and on Facebook at Jane Godman Author (https://www.facebook.com/JaneGodmanAuthor).
Happy reading,
Jane
The Soldier’s Seduction
Jane Godman


www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
JANE GODMAN writes in a variety of romance genres, including paranormal, gothic and romantic suspense. Jane lives in England and loves to travel to European cities that are steeped in history and romance—Venice, Dubrovnik and Vienna are among her favorites. Jane is married to a lovely man and is mom to two grown-up children.
This book is dedicated to my editor, Carly Silver. She makes every book we work on together the best it can be, and she has been a wonderful cheerleader for the Sons of Stillwater miniseries!
Thank you, Carly.
Contents
Cover (#u05faa05e-8219-5b5d-bb09-088b59fa1bdd)
Back Cover Text (#u2f852106-3de5-5832-8a93-00afedafe0bb)
Introduction (#uce4a4a2c-3ee2-59ad-8205-9d3bddcc10d5)
Dear Reader (#u405c3096-45d8-521c-9411-4ddcc95453c3)
Title Page (#uf27c334b-4f7b-5210-af1e-115c531dc0aa)
About the Author (#ua789cbf3-fa4c-5eb3-8b26-ccb17477414c)
Dedication (#uf722b802-8165-54bc-bf74-8f7ec8c83dcd)
Chapter 1 (#uc4f650f5-1ae2-5d7a-ad0d-6abccc7141b6)
Chapter 2 (#u62aab3ba-2670-590f-83d0-7a602a3cb670)
Chapter 3 (#u409d2ea4-0142-591b-ab3a-fcc4db84c054)
Chapter 4 (#uab0730fd-baaf-579e-b023-4ef5aca6d97b)
Chapter 5 (#ue665049b-4e56-527b-9848-fd73afd68508)
Chapter 6 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 7 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 8 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 1 (#u4aa186bc-28f6-5553-bed8-42ac5f27d921)
Bryce Delaney was at a point where anger was threatening to tip over into fire-storming rage, and he wasn’t sure why. This sort of thing happened all the time. Delaney Transportation was a large organization. Dealing with employees who stepped out of line was part of his job. He was used to the inevitable frustrations that came with being in charge. Even so, as he made his way toward his brother’s office, he needed to find an outlet for this unexpected fury.
When Bryce kicked the door closed behind him, Vincente looked up from one of his complicated color-coded financial spreadsheets. As he took in the expression on Bryce’s face, he immediately closed the lid of his laptop, indicating the chair on the other side of his desk. “What has she done now?”
Bryce didn’t know whether to be annoyed that his half brother had interpreted the source of his mood correctly, or relieved that there was no need for lengthy explanations.
“She didn’t turn up for the weekly drivers’ meeting. Again.” Bryce flopped into the chair, running a hand through his hair in frustration. “This is the third time since she started with us. Last time I gave her a warning. I told her if it happened again, I would fire her stupid, stubborn, skinny ass without any further discussion.”
Vincente leaned back in his own chair, tenting his fingers beneath his chin. “If you gave her a warning and you don’t act on it, the other drivers will think you’ve gone soft.”
“I know they will. It’s just—” Bryce leaned back, gazing at the ceiling as some of the fight went out of him. “What the hell is she playing at? This is a good job. We pay well. Delaney Transportation is a great company to work for. But it’s like she has to go out of her way to thwart me any way she can. It’s not just the meetings. She’s forever telling me how I can do my job better, finding fault with the schedules, wanting me to change routes I’ve planned weeks in advance. Steffi Grantham has been a goddamn thorn in my side from the day you hired her.”
“Whoa, don’t turn this around and make it my fault. If I remember rightly, you told me I did a good job when I hired her. You said she was a good driver.” Vincente rose and moved to the coffee machine. He held up a mug and Bryce shook his head.
“She is a damn good driver. When she quits bellyaching long enough to get behind the wheel.”
Bryce couldn’t explain his feelings to Vincente. Couldn’t explain them to anyone, least of all himself. How could he possibly disclose the real reason he didn’t want to fire Steffi, no matter how hard she pushed him? Where did he start? How about with the truth? That, if he let Steffi go, he would lose the one thing that had made his miserable existence worthwhile these last three months?
After two years of bleak nothingness, the truth was there had been a bright spark in his life just lately...and Steffi was responsible for its ignition. But what sort of sorry specimen does that make me? Bryce wasn’t about to confess to anyone, least of all the brother with whom he had only recently begun to repair a prickly relationship, that the only thing getting him out of bed in the mornings these days was the prospect of an argument with a woman whose only interest in him seemed to be to tell him what he was doing wrong.
Vincente returned with his own coffee, setting the steaming mug on the desk. His expression was thoughtful. “I’m not happy to part ways with a good driver. And you know how hard I’ve been working to make sure we recruit and keep more women onto the team. Part of that drive has been to make sure we find ways around any issues they may have with things like attendance at meetings outside of their usual shift patterns. We’ve done a lot of listening to the other jobs some of our female employees do. Childcare, looking after elderly relatives, keeping the home going...we have to find ways to ensure we don’t put anyone who is dealing with all those things at a disadvantage.”
Bryce clenched a fist on his thigh. “You know I support that, but Steffi can’t keep defying me like this. I can only help her with her issues if she talks to me about them. She won’t.”
“It’s your call. Managing the drivers is your responsibility.” Bryce got the feeling Vincente would have liked to say something more, but, after a brief pause during which he sipped his coffee, he remained quiet.
“She made me so mad today. This is one time I’m actually going to enjoy telling someone they’re fired. In fact—” Bryce glanced at the clock on the wall “—I’m going to stop by her place on my way home.”
Vincente frowned. “Is that a good idea? You’re angry, and Steffi is headstrong. My advice is to call her, or wait until she shows up tomorrow. And don’t rush into firing her until you’ve heard what she has to say.”
Bryce wavered. Vincente was right, of course. Damn him. He shouldn’t do this while he was angry, and he probably shouldn’t do it face-to-face. But no one had ever gotten under his skin the way Steffi Grantham could. Since she had started working for Delaney Transportation three months ago, he had given her chance after chance and she’d thrown every one back in his face. He wanted to look her in the eye when he told her that today was the day she had used up those chances. Wanted to see if there was even a flicker of remorse there. Of course, it was just about impossible to see her eyes behind those huge, tinted glasses she wore all the time.
“Don’t worry. I’ll keep it brief and professional.”
“That’s not what I meant.” Vincente’s dark eyes were fixed on his face. “By going to her home and being alone with her, you’ll make yourself vulnerable. She could accuse you of anything and it would be her word against yours.”
Bryce frowned. “I hadn’t thought of it that way. But although she’s a hornet, I can’t imagine Steffi would be vindictive. It’s not her style. And she’s the one who has pushed this by not turning up today. After our last confrontation over the drivers’ meetings, she must know what’s coming.”
Vincente had been born and raised in Wyoming, but some of his gestures unconsciously betrayed his half Italian heritage. The shrug he gave now was as Italian as the taste of Chianti or the roar of a vintage Vespa’s engine. “Your call.”
Half an hour later Bryce was pulling into the parking lot at the Wilderness Lake Trailer Park and wondering if his brother might have been right. Maybe he should have waited. The edge was gone now from his anger. He viewed his surroundings and felt a flat, uncomfortable dejection. This was not the sort of place he had expected to find Steffi calling home. What the hell was it with her? How did she manage to make him feel so many conflicting emotions every time he thought of her?
Stillwater was a beautiful place. The city itself was cradled low in the embrace of a towering Wyoming mountain range. It was becoming increasingly popular with the tourists who recognized it had as much to offer as neighboring Yellowstone, and several new trailer parks had sprung up recently. Bryce’s other brother, Cameron, was the mayor of Stillwater and he, together with the council, fought an ongoing battle to ensure these places stayed within municipal regulations. Bryce was fairly sure this one didn’t. It was a run-down eyesore.
Roughly divided into sections, there was an area for fixed trailers, a larger one for visiting recreational vehicles and a cluster of tired-looking log cabins. Next to these, a tumbledown sign invited visitors to Inquire About Our Rates! Several cabins had broken windows, and the wooden structures looked like they hadn’t been varnished for years. Weeds grew wild between the paving stones of the path, and garbage was piled in the pathways between the cabins. Bryce didn’t imagine the owners got many inquiries about rates. As he drove along the narrow road in front of the cabins, he made a mental note to tell Cameron about this place.
Steffi’s cabin was set slightly apart from the others. Typical Steffi, Bryce thought grimly as he parked in front before treading up the shallow step and rapping on the scarred wood of the door. She always chose to set herself apart. There was no answer, but her beaten-up car, the one that looked like it was held together with rust and prayers, was parked out front. He took a step back and looked at the broken-down building.
He couldn’t reconcile the feisty woman he knew with this place. His drivers didn’t make a fortune, but they earned a decent wage. Enough on which to live well. It occurred to him that he knew nothing about Steffi, except that she wasn’t from Stillwater. Why had she chosen to live here? None of my business. As soon as the thought came to him he dismissed it as unworthy. He might be about to fire the woman, but no one deserved to live in this hellhole. Whatever had brought her here, if she needed a helping hand, he would offer it. He almost laughed. Just be prepared to get that hand bitten off, Delaney.
When his second knock still got no response, he walked around the cabin. His impression of the place didn’t improve upon closer contact. It was falling down. When he got around the back, Bryce pushed his way through the weeds and got up close to the window. Steffi would flay him alive with that acid tongue of hers if she knew what he was doing, but he pressed his face to the grimy glass of the window...and recoiled in shock at what he saw.
Steffi was lying curled up on the bedroom floor, clutching her hands to her stomach as her features twisted in an expression of pain.
* * *
Steffi could see the clock on her bedside table from where she lay and its digital display told her the only thing she needed to know. The drivers’ meeting had finished hours ago. Bryce Delaney would be burning up with rage. Even though she had lain awake all night with stomach cramps after throwing up most of the previous day, she had done her best to get ready for work that morning. Struggling to the shower, she had shivered under the pathetic stream of water that never quite seemed to heat up enough. Getting into her clothes had taken forever and by the time she’d managed it, she was shaking all over and as weak as a kitten. As she’d snatched up her car keys and cell phone, her legs had given way and she’d hit the floor. That was the last thing she remembered for some time.
Now, having faded in and out of consciousness for most of the day, she supposed she could have called Bryce and offered him an explanation for why she’d missed his precious meeting. Her lips tightened. He wouldn’t believe me. And I won’t grovel. Let him fire me. It was bound to happen sooner or later.
She closed her eyes again, only to have them jerk open abruptly at the sound of splintering wood. They’ve found me! The thought hammered panic through to every nerve ending and she tried to scurry into the only available hiding place. Her weary limbs refused to fully obey the promptings of her brain and she was only halfway under the bed when a man burst into the room. She cowered, wrapping her arms around her head, wanting to fight him as he reached out a hand to her, but not having the strength.
“Steffi, it’s okay. It’s me. It’s Bryce.”
He knelt beside her. She risked uncovering her head to look at him. The expression in his dark eyes was a mixture of shock and concern. She could never see those eyes without noticing how beautiful they were. And then giving herself a mental kick for noticing. She couldn’t allow herself the sort of weakness that came with attraction. No matter how handsome Bryce might be—and he was oh-so handsome—she had to fight the magnetic pull that drew her to him. She had more important things to focus on. Like staying alive.
A thought penetrated her weariness. Focus. Eyes. Something about eyes...
“Don’t let them get me.” She clutched his arm, momentarily too afraid to reinstate the barriers she was always so careful to maintain between them. “I need to see him first.”
“Who, Steffi?” Bryce’s voice throbbed with anxiety. “What are you afraid of?”
By the time he’d finished speaking, every reason why she needed to shut him, and everyone else, out of her life had returned. The fear of being discovered receded, replaced by the more immediate fear of allowing Bryce to get too close. Antagonism usually did the trick. She quickly slipped into the familiar role.
“How did you get in here?” She wished her voice didn’t sound so pathetic. Where was her cloak of prickliness when she needed it?
“I kicked the door down.”
“You did what?” That was better. That tone had something approaching her usual fire.
His grin peeped out. The boyish one that had an annoying habit of disarming her just as she was in full tirade. “Oh, come on, Steffi. I could have blown on it like the wolf in the kid’s story and gotten in here. It will take me two minutes to patch it back up again. Five minutes and I’ll have it in better shape than it was before. Now tell me what’s wrong.”
She tried to inject every bit of energy she had into her next words. “Get out of my house.”
Evidently every bit of energy she had wasn’t enough, because he scooped her up in his arms and deposited her on the bed. She should try to fight him, but it was taking every ounce of stamina she had just to keep her eyes open. She slumped back onto the pillows, scowling at him from beneath lowered brows.
“Tell me what I can do to help you.”
She didn’t want his help. Accepting it was the very last thing she wanted to do, but she was weak as a kitten. Maybe if she conceded and allowed him to feel useful he would go away. She had a feeling it was a vain hope. “Some water would be good. And you could hand me my glasses.”
“You don’t need those tinted lenses in here. It’s gloomy as hell.”
“I can’t see without them.” It was a lie, but she’d remembered what it was about eyes that bothered her. Part of it.
He found her glasses on the bedside table and handed them to her before making his way toward the tiny kitchen. She heard him moving around in there and lay back, too wrung out to do anything else. When he returned with a glass of water, Steffi found to her shame that she couldn’t struggle into a sitting position. Without hesitation, Bryce placed the glass on the bedside table and, sitting on the bed next to her, slid an arm around her waist. Lifting her so she could lean against him, he held the glass to her lips. She submitted, grateful for both the cool liquid and his strong arms.
“We have to get you to a doctor.”
She shook her head, the action causing her cheek to rub against the hard muscle of his chest. It was both comforting and disturbing at the same time. Disturbing because she didn’t do physical contact. Closeness meant opening up to another person. That meant trust. The last time Steffi had trusted someone, she had been five years old. The person she trusted had brought her a new doll, then murdered her parents. She had never made that mistake again.
“No doctor.” Not a chance.
“Steffi, you are clearly unwell. If this is about money...”
With an effort, she lifted her head to glare at him. Even behind the dark glasses, she had perfected the expression so it had maximum impact. “I said no.”
His laugh vibrated through her body. “Has anyone ever told you that you are the most stubborn person in the whole world?”
“Apart from you?”
“Apart from me.”
She nodded. “Yes.”
“Your family? I’d like to meet them.”
You never will. The thought jerked her back to reality. “I’ll be fine now, Bryce. You can go. Thanks for your help.”
“Yeah, like that’s going to happen.” The sarcasm in his voice was withering. “I’m just going to walk out of here and leave you when you can’t even crawl to your own bed.”
“You don’t have any choice. I don’t want you here.” With a determined effort, Steffi pushed herself away from him and tried to sit up straight. It was a mistake. Behind the tinted lenses, the edges of her vision went black. Everything swam out of focus. She heard Bryce call her name in alarm, and the last thing she felt was his strong arms catching her as she fell back onto the pillows.
* * *
Steffi would kill him for ignoring her wishes, Bryce decided as he ended his call. If she couldn’t find something to do to him that would cause more pain than death. He checked on her again in between waiting for Leon Sinclair to answer his summons and fixing the pathetic front door. Her breathing seemed way too shallow.
Stop panicking. Leon will know what to do.
Bryce was pleased to have found this decisiveness within himself. It was a trait that often went missing at the most important times. Day to day, he could function. No one would know there was a problem. At Delaney Transportation, he knew the drivers viewed him as a good boss: tough, uncompromising, a little picky about the details. It was when the unexpected happened, if he was faced with an emergency, that it all came back to him. The explosion, the blood, the guilt. That was when his mind and body froze and he ceased to function. But he had made this decision about Steffi without hesitation. The thought brought with it a new and unexpected tingle of pride.
He prowled restlessly around the little cabin. In contrast to its ramshackle exterior, the inside was scrupulously clean and neat. In the midst of this squalor, Steffi had tried to make the place comfortable. Somehow, the sight of the bright cushions and throw on the sofa brought with it a feeling of sadness. He frowned. If she suspected him of pitying her, Steffi would be outraged. In the bedroom, the quilt on the bed was a colorful, cozy patchwork and there were vases of wildflowers throughout. The whole cabin smelled fresh and clean. There was a TV in the tiny den and a smaller one in the bedroom.
Even so, there was nothing about this place that made it Steffi’s. The few prints on the walls were landscapes. There was nothing personal, no photographs, no knickknacks, nothing that claimed it as hers. It was as bland as a vacation rental or hotel room. If she walked out of here right now, no one would know who had lived here. The only unusual thing was the stack of newspapers—she must read several each day—and celebrity gossip magazines. He wouldn’t have figured Steffi was the type to enjoy those. He shrugged. It just confirmed how little he knew about her.
When Leon arrived, Bryce studied him cautiously. Both men were veterans of the war in Afghanistan, but their career paths could not have been more different. While Bryce had been an explosive ordnance disposal—EOD—specialist, or bomb disposal expert, Leon had been an army doctor. Bryce’s promising career had been brought to an end two years ago by a roadside bomb. His physical injuries had healed quickly, leaving him with only a slight limp. He knew his brothers would say he had been left with other, deeper scars. Bryce didn’t encourage such comments, even if he knew them to be true.
Although Leon retained his medical license to practice, he had been given a medical discharge for mental health reasons. He had come home to Stillwater just over a year ago and had proceeded to make a name for himself by getting drunk and raising every kind of hell he could come up with. He had achieved the distinction of getting himself thrown out of every bar in the city and beyond.
Leon’s arrival in town had coincided with a period in Bryce’s life during which he had wondered whether alcohol might be the answer to his own problems. Since he didn’t even know what the question was, he soon found out it wasn’t. He and Leon had been on some spectacular benders while he tried to find out. Bryce had quickly sobered up, but it took Leon a lot longer. A spell in rehab had followed and he was still fighting his demons day by day. His reputation lingered and Bryce was the only person in Stillwater who didn’t believe it was still Leon’s ambition to drink the town dry.
Although Bryce knew how hard Leon was working to fight his addiction, he was secretly relieved to see that Leon was perfectly sober.
“Where’s the patient?” The slight stammer that disappeared when he had been drinking was evident now as Leon held up his medical bag.
“Through here.” Bryce led him through to the bedroom. “She was on the floor when I found her. Although she was conscious then, she passed out again after I lifted her onto the bed.”
“Who is she?” Leon had removed Steffi’s glasses and was checking her pulse.
“One of my drivers. She didn’t show up for a meeting today—” He broke off as Steffi blinked.
“Oh, for God’s sake, Bryce.” Although her voice was weak, she still managed to sound belligerent. “I told you I didn’t need a doctor.”
“As the only doctor in this room, I’m going to overrule you.” Bryce had never heard that sort of authoritative tone from Leon before. “I expect you would prefer it if Bryce left us while I examine you?”
Steffi subsided back on the pillows, nodding submissively. So that was all it took? Somehow Bryce doubted the high-handed manner Leon had used would work for him. Before he left the room, he overheard a brief doctor-patient exchange.
“When did you last eat?” Leon asked as he opened his medical bag.
“What day is it?”
“Wednesday.”
Steffi seemed to be struggling to work something out. “That means I was sick all day Tuesday, my day off. So I may have had a snack on Monday evening.”
Bryce closed the door quietly behind him. Damn it, Steffi. How the hell could she not know when she last ate? What was he going to do about her? There must be a story behind why she was here, but the chances of Steffi letting anyone get close enough to know what it was were remote to nonexistent. The chances of Bryce being the person she chose to confide in... He shook his head. Worse than nonexistent. Stillwater was a small city and Delaney Transportation had its own grapevine. Bryce had overheard the inevitable speculation about Steffi when she first arrived in town. He knew she had been a disappointment to the gossips, who had been unable to discover anything about her. He was fairly sure she had no friends in Stillwater. Who did Steffi talk to? Who knew anything about this intensely private and prickly woman?
Bryce gazed out the kitchen window at the hayfield of lawn surrounding the cabin. He knew what his brothers would say. Bryce was good at collecting waifs and strays. It was what he did instead of dealing with his own problems. He had a sixth sense for people who were in trouble. And when that sense kicked in, he had no mechanism for walking away. Was that what he was doing here? Maybe there was no problem with Steffi other than her current illness. Okay, this cabin she lived in was a dump. There could be a good reason for that. Eccentricity. Debt. Maybe she was getting out of a bad relationship and didn’t want to be found. It was her business. She didn’t want him here. He should just walk away, leave her to it.
Oh, hell. I’m already involved. Walking away wasn’t an option.
The sound of a door opening drew him away from his thoughts. He went back to the hall where Leon was closing the bedroom door behind him. “I’ve told her to get some rest.”
“What’s wrong with her?” Bryce scanned his friend’s face.
“A nasty case of stomach flu,” Leon said. “It’s been going around.” His expression was grave. “In Steffi’s case it’s been much worse because she doesn’t look after herself. What’s her story?”
“I don’t know. She’s only been working for me for a few months.” Bryce ran a hand through his hair. “What does she need?”
“Medication doesn’t help with this particular strain. She needs rest and plenty of fluids. Then light meals for a few days. After that she needs to build up her strength. From what she was saying, she rarely eats more than one meal a day and even then it’s not well balanced.” Leon gave Bryce a sidelong glance. “Is money a problem?”
“It shouldn’t be. We pay our drivers well.” Bryce heard the defensive note in his voice and was annoyed. He had no need to uphold the company’s reputation.
Leon nodded. “Even so, if she had money trouble before she got here, her debts might eat up all her income.”
It was exactly what Bryce had been thinking. He withdrew a roll of cash from the pocket of his jeans. “Can you go to the store, get some provisions and bring them back here?”
Leon raised a brow. “People don’t generally trust me with their money.”
“I know it won’t end up behind the bar of...” Bryce paused. “Is there anywhere in town still serving you?”
Leon pretended to give it some thought before shaking his head. “Bartenders don’t have much faith in the word of a recovering alcoholic. And I find the bigger the distance I put between myself and any bar, the better it is for everyone concerned.”
The words might have been frivolous, but the look in his friend’s eyes was anguished. “I trust you to come back.” Bryce handed him the cash.
Leon grinned. “Damn. Now you’ve guilt-tripped me into it.” He made his way to the door, turning back with a slight frown. “I asked Steffi about her eyes. She said her vision is fine and her only problem is light sensitivity.”
“Her eyes?” Bryce tried to remember if he’d ever really seen Steffi’s eyes. He didn’t think he had. They were always hidden behind those tinted glasses she wore.
“Yes, it’s a condition called coloboma. It causes an irregularly shaped iris. In Steffi’s case, it means she has very striking-looking eyes, but I don’t think there is anything for you to worry about as her employer. She told me she doesn’t have any of the other complications that can be associated with the condition. She’s certainly safe to drive, and she has insurance that covers her condition.”
Bryce had no idea what Leon was talking about. He was worried about Steffi, but his concerns had nothing to do with her eyesight.
“I’ll be here when you bring the groceries back. I’m staying with her tonight.”
Chapter 2 (#u4aa186bc-28f6-5553-bed8-42ac5f27d921)
As Steffi came slowly awake, she was conscious of two unexpected things. One was a sense of well-being, something she hadn’t felt for the last three long, fraught months. The second was the low murmur of the TV in the corner of the room. When she turned her head, she realized that Bryce was seated in a chair at the side of her bed. His head was turned away from her as he watched the screen. She took a moment to study his strong profile in the flickering light.
When she had arrived in Stillwater, her whole focus had been on survival. Finding somewhere to live had been her first priority. An undemanding job had been next. When she had been hired by Vincente, he had introduced her to his brother, her new boss. With everything that was going on in her life, the last thing Steffi had expected was to be blown away by a man. But that was what had happened the first time she had set eyes on Bryce Delaney. And the impact hadn’t gone away. It hit her every time she looked at him.
With his dark, wavy hair and deep-set brown eyes he was a striking man. High cheekbones, an aristocratic nose and a perfectly proportioned mouth, with slightly full lips, would have made him stand out in any crowd. Add in a muscular, athletic body, and Bryce Delaney came as close to the ideal image of masculine perfection as it was possible to get.
But it wasn’t like she hadn’t seen a good-looking man before. She had been around plenty of them day to day and never once experienced the sort of fizz of electricity Bryce Delaney induced in her. And to feel this now? Shouldn’t she be immune to anything but the way her life had recently been turned upside down in the most destructive way imaginable?
Bryce’s presence explained the noise from the TV. The feeling of well-being? She had no idea where that was coming from. All she knew was she felt safe. Which was ridiculous. She wasn’t safe and it would be madness to try to fool herself. If she allowed herself to slip into a mind-set where she stopped being watchful, she would make a mistake. She had been scrupulously careful; she wasn’t about to throw it away now just because, for some reason, she’d managed to snatch a few hours’ sleep. And that was another thing. After three months of insomnia, how come she was suddenly able to slumber peacefully?
Her thoughts caused her to stir restlessly. The movement brought Bryce out of his chair and to her side in an instant.
“Hey.” He switched on the lamp. “Let me get you a drink of water.”
Steffi managed to shuffle into a sitting position so she could accept the glass from him. It wasn’t dignified, but from the moment he had found her sprawled on the floor her self-respect had taken a nosedive. “Why are you still here?”
“Because you need someone to take care of you.”
Instead of firing up with anger at his high-handedness, Steffi felt sharp, unaccustomed tears sting her eyelids. Bryce couldn’t know what he did to her with those words. He had no idea what the last few months had been like. For the first time in forever, she had no razor-edged comeback. Everything slipped away. The role she played, the barriers she put up, they were all gone as she gazed up at him.
“Say something quick, Steffi, or I’ll think you’re dying.” There was a trace of amusement in Bryce’s voice.
“Go to hell.” The words had no bite and she sank back onto the pillows.
“That’s more like it.” He took the glass of water from her, scanning her face. She saw his eyes widen.
Damn. She was used to that look. It was the reaction she got whenever people first saw her eyes. Her unusual, beautiful eyes. In the early days, they had been her passport to success. Now they might just be her downfall.
“Is there something wrong?” She might as well call him on it.
Bryce collected himself with obvious difficulty. “No. Not unless you count the fact that Leon thinks you need to take better care of yourself.”
Steffi hunched a shoulder. “He had no right to tell you that.”
“He was concerned about you. I’m concerned about you.”
She watched his face. She preferred him snapping and snarling. In this mood, he was too breathtaking. And Steffi lived in a world where breathtaking men were commonplace. Used to live, she reminded herself. Those days are gone. Forever? I guess so...unless I can bring this nightmare to end. She had come to Stillwater with that aim in mind, but her quarry had remained stubbornly elusive. The man she had come here to confront seemed determined to stay away, although she didn’t flatter herself that her presence in Stillwater had anything to do with his absence. But, until she could meet him face-to-face, she had to avoid being found by his thugs. If they got to her, she was unsure whether their instructions would be to kill her or take her to their boss. Steffi wasn’t taking any chances. She had come here for answers, even if getting them meant putting herself in danger.
“I thought you stopped by here to fire me.”
His expression told her she’d hit a nerve. “That was the plan, but then I found out why you didn’t show up yesterday.”
“Yesterday? What time is it?” Steffi turned her head to look at the clock. “Seriously, Bryce, haven’t you got better places to be at two a.m.?”
She blushed slightly at the implication of her own words. Even in the short time she’d been in Stillwater, she’d picked up on Bryce Delaney’s reputation. He slept around. A different date, if not every night, at least every few days. The man was a walking shot of testosterone and it seemed the ladies of West County were only too happy to indulge his need to be the local stud.
His lips quirked into a smile that told her he understood the reason for her blush. “As it happens, I don’t.” He frowned slightly, changing the subject abruptly. “When I broke in here, you were afraid of something. You said, ‘Don’t let them get me.’ What was that about?”
She shrugged, hoping the gloom disguised her blush. “Did I? Maybe I was delirious or something.”
It was a lame explanation, but, although he gave her a searching look, he didn’t push it. “Go back to sleep, Steffi. I’ll be here if you need me.”
She should probably challenge that. Get mad. Throw him out. But she was still so tired and, even if she only admitted it to herself, having him here was comforting. Snuggling back down into the bedclothes, she closed her eyes and listened to the voice of the newsreader. A train had derailed, causing major problems. There was an ongoing debate about the minimum wage. Steffi was just feeling sleep tug at the edge of her consciousness again when the focus switched from local issues to celebrity news.
“Police still have no further information on the whereabouts of actress Anya Moretti. Moretti, who has been missing since the murder of her boyfriend Greg Spence and an unknown woman three months ago, is best known for her roles in films such as...”
“Turn it off, please.” Steffi spoke more sharply than she had intended.
Bryce looked up in surprise. “Sorry, I didn’t know it was bothering you.” He flicked a switch on the remote control and the room was plunged into darkness and silence.
* * *
Sleep didn’t come easily to Bryce. When it did arrive it was brief and filled with nightmares from which he woke sweating, having relived every minute of the living hell of that roadside explosion. Perhaps that was one of the reasons why he never chased slumber, why he tended to find other—more interesting—things to do during the hours of darkness. Sleeping in the uncomfortable upright chair in Steffi’s bedroom was damn near impossible. After shifting his long limbs into various positions, Bryce gave up. He didn’t want to switch on the lamp and disturb Steffi, but he did want to check on her before he left the room.
Stepping into the narrow hall, he flicked on the light. Returning to the bedroom, he gazed down at her in the gloomy half-light flowing through the open door. She was sleeping peacefully, her short, chestnut curls clustered like a halo around her head. In sleep her features seemed less sharp than in wakefulness. Steffi was one of those women who would never be able to lay claim to classical beauty. Taking each feature in turn, there was a flaw. Her nose definitely turned up at the end in a defiant, go-to-hell gesture. Her mouth was way too wide for prettiness and the gap between her front teeth caught the eye almost as much as her full lips. Then there was that stubborn, determined chin. The one she tilted upward at him during their frequent arguments. Yet when you put those features together, they made an unforgettable face. It wasn’t beautiful. It was mesmerizing.
Because she kept them hidden behind her dark glasses, Bryce hadn’t seen Steffi’s eyes until just now. They had taken his breath away. The golden-brown irises had elongated downward notches that made them look like cat’s eyes. He had never seen eyes like them. What had Leon called the condition that caused it? Coloboma, that was it.
She was an enigma. Bryce didn’t care what she said; Steffi had been scared out of her wits when he broke in here, trying to hide under the bed and covering her head with her hands. His first guess had been that she was running from a bad relationship. Don’t let them get me? Them. Plural. That made it sound less like she was running from a vengeful ex. One thing was for sure; she clearly wasn’t ready to confide in him. Another thing was certain; Bryce wasn’t leaving her until he knew she was both well and safe. To hell with what his brothers might say about his knack for collecting waifs and strays. This was Steffi. She was different. He didn’t know why; it was just a conviction, solid and unshakable, sitting in the center of his chest.
Treading softly back out of the room, Bryce made his way into the den. There was a TV in here as well, but the walls were so thin he was afraid of waking Steffi. With a sigh of resignation, he picked up one of her celebrity magazines and began to flick through it. After twenty minutes of thumbing through the magazines and newspapers, he came to the conclusion that Steffi had a bit of an obsession with the very story she had interrupted when she asked him to turn the TV off so she could go to sleep. Either that, or it was a coincidence that all these journals she had stockpiled contained articles about the disappearance of Anya Moretti.
Bryce hadn’t paid much attention to the case. Celebrities didn’t interest him, and the sort of happily-ever-after romances in which Anya Moretti starred weren’t his style. He knew it was a sordid story, typical gossip column fodder. Greg Spence, Moretti’s boyfriend, had been found shot through the head. The story was that another woman had been with him at the time. She had been shot as well, also through the head. Although the woman had still not been identified, rumors were rife on social media about the compromising position in which the couple had been found. Anya Moretti had not been seen since the day of the murders. The inevitable conclusions had been drawn. Moretti, once Hollywood’s darling, had already been tried and convicted in the press as the woman who had killed her boyfriend and his lover in a jealous rage.
Bryce thought again how he just hadn’t seen Steffi as the type to enjoy this sort of trashy reporting. He started to cast aside the magazine he had been thumbing without reading the story, when one of the pictures caught his eye. Most of the articles had gone with the same photographs. Moretti in the role that had brought her into the public eye as an accident-prone speedway rider, shaking loose her waist-length curls as she sat astride a bike and removed her helmet. Or on the podium when she received her Oscar, her arm held high as she raised the statuette above her head in a celebratory gesture. One had gone with a red carpet picture of her smiling into Spence’s eyes as they held hands. He was a tall, handsome man with dark brown hair drawn back into a ponytail. The caption beneath the picture stated that they hadn’t been together long, but there was already talk of an engagement. Most articles included pictures of the crime scene outside Spence’s luxury apartment on the morning the bodies were found. Emergency vehicles converged on the building, and shocked onlookers waited behind a makeshift barrier.
This picture Bryce studied now was different. This article included a photograph of a younger Anya Moretti. Her chestnut curls were drawn back in a ponytail and there was a wistful smile on her face as she turned to look at the photographer. She wasn’t exactly pretty, but you could tell she had that special something that would always draw the camera to her. It was her eyes that held Bryce’s attention. Her golden-brown eyes with their unusual downward notches. They were cat’s eyes. They were Steffi’s eyes.
* * *
It was fully light when Steffi woke again and she lay still, blinking slightly as she recalled the events of the previous day. Turning her head, she confirmed that Bryce was in the chair where he had been when she fell asleep. But something in his demeanor had changed. The concerned look had gone. He was watching her, but there was a frown in his eyes. She didn’t need to ask why. It was obvious. He knew. Somehow, between her falling asleep and waking, Bryce had discovered the secret of her identity.
“How did you find out?” It didn’t occur to her to try to deny it. Subterfuge wasn’t Steffi’s style. It almost felt like a relief that, at last, someone knew who she was.
“There was a picture in one of your magazines. It showed a close-up of your eyes.”
Steffi sighed, pushing herself into an upright position. Although she still felt weak, the stomach cramps were a thing of the past. “I knew my eyes would give me away. I usually wear contact lenses so I don’t draw attention to them. In the early days, when I made my first films, it didn’t bother me too much. Then the comments started to get intrusive and I decided I’d rather have normal eyes. But I’d been out jogging that day and I didn’t have time to pick my contact lenses up...” Her voice trailed off as the memory of that awful morning came back to her. Swallowing hard, she focused on Bryce. “What will you do now?”
“I guess that depends on you.” His eyes never left her face. “Did you kill them?”
“No, but I don’t know how I can prove that to you.”
Although she had known Bryce Delaney for only three months, Steffi had gotten to know enough about him in that time. He was fiercely moral and totally honest. If he thought she was the person who killed Greg and the woman he was with, Bryce would hand her over to the police without hesitation. He wouldn’t accept anything less than the truth from her. But how could she convince him about her version of events, particularly when everything she had told him since her arrival in Stillwater had been a lie?
He seemed to be following her thought process. “How about you tell me all of it and let me judge for myself?”
“Can I get a shower first?” She tried out a smile, but it went wrong somewhere in the middle and ended up with her lower lip wobbling pitifully.
She saw Bryce’s dark brown eyes soften slightly. “I’ll make coffee and toast while you get ready. Then we’ll talk.”
Standing under the lukewarm water, Steffi tried not to let the flashbacks get to her. It was useless. Ever since that day, she had lived with a constant series of images playing inside her head. Bright sunlight patterning the sidewalk as she jogged up to the entrance of Greg’s apartment building on that lazy Sunday morning. The man who exited the elevator as she stepped in. The strange feeling that had hit her in that instant. She tried to conjure up his image. His shades and the cap tilted low had disguised his looks. All she could recall was the tattoo on the back of his right hand where he gripped the gym bag he carried. The tattoo was an eye. A perfect, blue, bloodshot eye, gazing up at her from the back of his hand. An eye she had last seen when she was five years old.
It was the same sign the men who had killed her parents had on the back of their right hands. It wasn’t similar, or an imitation. It was the same tattoo. There was no way Steffi could be mistaken. Not when that symbol had featured in her nightmares for all these years. Not when, as a child, she had obsessively drawn that bloodshot orb over and over. Not when she could count the number of hours she had spent hunched over her laptop, searching the internet for gangs who used that mark.
The men who killed her parents had never been found, and the only information she had discovered about the tattoo was in connection with a Russian crime organization called the Sglaz, or Evil Eye, which had operated around the time of her parents’ death. Since the gang had disappeared from public record around the same time, Steffi had been unable to find out any more about them.
Exiting the elevator in a rush, she had fumbled her way into Greg’s apartment, calling out his name. Even then, she had known something was very wrong. When she walked into the den Greg had been seated in his favorite chair. He was naked and his legs were splayed. A girl knelt between them. A girl whose hair was a mass of brilliant gold corkscrew curls.
As soon as she saw the blood Steffi had run. So much blood. She had narrowly avoided stumbling over the two suitcases in the hall as she had tugged open the apartment door. The memories had come flooding back and she had just kept on running. She was six blocks away when she tugged her cell phone out of her purse and called 911. Stammering out the details, but withholding her name, she had fought a losing battle with her nausea. Doubling over, she had let nature have its way. When her stomach was finally empty, she had kept running, her only instinct to get away and stay away. Her rational self told her she should go to the police and tell them what she knew. Her flight instinct was stronger, overruling reason. What she knew was nothing. What she thought she knew sounded crazy.
Blood and that tattooed eye. They were the images that played on a loop in her mind. Keeping her awake at night and haunting her during the day. Twin memories. Her parents and now Greg. The thought made her close her eyes as feelings of love and loss welled up inside her. To have Greg taken from her like that in the same way her parents had been. Just as we had found each other.
The coffee and toast smelled good. The thought surprised her as she returned to the bedroom wrapped in a towel. For the first time in forever, she actually felt hungry. She dressed quickly in jeans, boots and a lightweight sweater, rubbing a towel over her hair. It had cost her a pang when she took a pair of scissors to her long locks that first night in a cheap motel room, but she was used to her short curls now.
As she pulled back the drapes, she felt a loosening of some of the tightness around her heart. Could she tell Bryce all of it? Could she trust someone for the first time in her life? She wouldn’t know until she tried. In recognizing her, Bryce had forced her into a situation where she would have to make the attempt. Maybe it would be comforting to finally talk to someone.
She was about to turn away from the window when she caught a glimpse of movement in the trees beyond the lawn. Her heartbeat stuttered and she narrowed her attention on that area. Was it a breeze stirring the trees? An animal? There it was again. Her heart gave a downward lurch. Someone was standing just within the cover of the trees, watching the cabin.
“Bryce?” Steffi was running for the door when the window shattered.
Chapter 3 (#u4aa186bc-28f6-5553-bed8-42ac5f27d921)
Bryce took a sip of his coffee and examined the surreal situation. He had been going over and over it in his mind since he first saw that picture in the magazine. Steffi was wanted for a double murder. It was hardly a minor thing. He should just get her into the car and take her downtown. Hand her over to his sister-in-law, Laurie, Cameron’s wife and the Stillwater Police Department Detective Division’s newest recruit, and let her deal with it. By not doing that, he was making himself into an accomplice.
So why was he standing here, waiting to hear her story, remembering the way her lip had trembled when she tried to be brave as she asked if she could have a shower before they talked? Damned if I know. But he was going to let her tell her side of it before he decided what to do. Although, at this moment in time, even though he was determined to uphold his promise to keep her safe, he couldn’t see any alternative to handing her over to the police.
He ran a frustrated hand through his hair. It was still early, but, picking up his cell phone, he sent Vincente a message, letting him know he wouldn’t be at work. Since Bryce never took a day off, it would no doubt cause his brother to raise those expressive dark brows of his. Bryce shrugged. Let Vincente speculate. The truth was a lot more far-fetched than anything that imaginative mind of his could come up with.
He heard Steffi moving around in the bedroom and poured another cup of coffee for her. His hand was poised in the act of refilling his own cup, when he heard Steffi call his name. Bryce had barely a moment to register the panic in her voice before there was an almighty crash.
“What the...?”
Bryce erupted from the kitchen in time to get a back view of a man forcing Steffi out of the bedroom and down the short hall toward the front door. One hand was clamped over her mouth and although she was making a wild attempt to fight him, he had his other arm around her waist. Bryce took a moment to register what was happening. The intruder was huge, shaped like a barrel, with thighs like tree trunks and fists like hams. Towering over Steffi, he was able to ignore her struggles and propel her along with him.
Bryce launched himself at the man. Even in the urgency of the moment, a thought flashed through his mind. Not even a second’s hesitation. Nice work. Starting in a crouch, Bryce barreled into the intruder’s midsection, knocking him off his feet. Steffi went down as well, but, lithe as a cat, she broke free of her captor’s hold, rolling to one side. As the two men hit the floor, they came together in a tangled mass of limbs.
A blur of fists flashed back and forth. The intruder might have been bigger than Bryce, but Bryce was faster. Years of mixed martial arts training in addition to the strict exercise regime of the army meant he had endurance and discipline on his side. They switched places repeatedly. Eventually, Bryce pinned the other man down, straddling him and holding on to his shirt as he pounded his right fist into his face. Then, with a sudden surge of enormous strength, the intruder let out a bellow of rage and threw Bryce off. Reversing their positions, he forced Bryce into the floor and drove his fists into his rib cage, one after the other. It felt like twin sledgehammers were slamming into him over and over. The breath was being systematically driven out of his lungs, until Bryce struggled to draw in even a gasp of air.
Just as he thought he was about to pass out, Bryce heard Steffi call out his name in a warning. Looking up, he saw her standing over them. As he ducked his head out of the way, she brought a vase of flowers crashing down onto the top of the intruder’s skull. Although the other man remained conscious, the blow slowed him down long enough for Bryce to land a powerful, uppercut punch to his jaw. He followed this up immediately with two more slugs and the man toppled over. He hit the floor, his head bouncing off the wooden boards with a dull thud that signaled he wouldn’t be getting up again for some time.
Grimacing and clutching his ribs as he rose to his feet, Bryce leaned against the wall as he caught his breath.
“How did he get in?” He managed to gasp out the words.
“He came in through the bedroom window. The whole frame gave way under his weight.”
“What are you doing?” He glanced down at Steffi as she dropped to her knees beside the intruder.
“Just checking.”
Her body was partially blocking Bryce’s view, but she seemed to be turning the man’s right hand so she could get a better look at it. Whatever she saw prompted an unexpected reaction. Without warning, Steffi bolted. In one fluid movement, she was on her feet and running. Out of the cabin, out into the sunlit morning, out in the direction of God knew where.
“Steffi, wait...”
Before he followed her, Bryce spared a glance down at the intruder. What had she seen to cause her to run like the hounds of hell were at her heels? The back of the man’s right hand was covered in a tattoo. A pale blue, bloodshot eye gazed unblinkingly up at Bryce.
* * *
It’s my turn. First my parents. Then Greg. Now me.
They were the only thoughts in Steffi’s mind as she ran out of the cabin. Straight into the arms of another man.
“Zdravstvuyte, Stefanya.” Hearing the Russian word for “hello” along with her full first name made her blood run cold. “The Big Guy has been looking for you. Keeping him waiting is never a good idea.”
She was aware of Bryce skidding out of the cabin behind her at the same time as she was scooped up and thrown onto the back seat of a waiting car. Bryce shouted for her abductor to stop and got a stream of Russian curses in response. As she bounced into a sitting position, Steffi saw the Russian pull a gun out from the waistband of his pants and take aim at Bryce. To her relief, Bryce ducked behind his Range Rover just in time to avoid the bullet. Her captor jumped into the driver’s seat of his own car and gunned the engine. Screeching away, he drove way too fast for the narrow tracks that crisscrossed the trailer park. Steffi risked peeping out the rear window and saw Bryce’s vehicle following close behind.
“Get down,” the man in the front seat growled at her as he exited the trailer park gates and swung wildly onto the highway, narrowly avoiding a collision with an oncoming truck. “Lie on the seat and don’t move.”
He waved the gun back between the seats with his right hand in a threatening gesture. Although she obeyed his instruction and curled into a ball, Steffi remembered his words. If “the Big Guy” wanted to see her, he would want her alive. It was no consolation, but it meant this man wasn’t going to shoot her. Not yet.
Three months ago, she had come to Stillwater in search of the Big Guy. She wanted answers. And now, it seemed, he did, too. She wasn’t sure why it had taken him twenty-two years to decide to speak to her. Until recently, she hadn’t known his identity. Could he have been in prison or living overseas all this time? Whatever the reason, it seemed he had lost track of her after he’d executed her parents. He had resurfaced with grisly results, resulting in the deaths of Greg and the unknown woman. Since she was on her way to see him, Steffi supposed she would find out the truth soon enough.
They were traveling fast and erratically. Steffi was thrown around by the movement of the vehicle as her abductor wove wildly back and forth across the road. He was swearing under his breath and, unable to figure out the reason for his strange behavior, Steffi risked shifting into a half-sitting position so she could glance out the rear window again. The cause of his annoyance soon became obvious and her heart gave an optimistic bound.
Bryce was still tailing them...and he was gaining on them. Even though it was impossible to see his face across the distance between the two vehicles, Steffi could imagine his expression. The determined set to his jaw. The stubborn glint in his dark eyes. The way he held his whole body rigid. It was a look she had provoked often enough. She never would have believed the time would come when Bryce Delaney’s obstinacy would be such a welcome sight.
There was little early-morning traffic, which was just as well, since her abductor was veering across to the other side of the road in an attempt to throw Bryce off his tail. With a feeling of mingled horror and elation, she figured out what Bryce was attempting to do. He was going to try a PIT, or precision immobilization technique, maneuver. It was a pursuit tactic from one of her movies. Although a stunt double had been used in the driving scene, Steffi had been fascinated by the maneuver itself and the skill it took to pull it off.
Had Bryce been trained to do this? She knew he had been in the army, but she had no idea of his role. From what she could see, it looked like he knew what he was doing as he pulled alongside the Russian’s vehicle. Carefully aligning his front wheels with the fleeing car’s back wheels at such high speed was no easy task.
“I told you to stay down,” the Russian growled at Steffi. The words lacked any heat as he struggled to avoid Bryce’s next move.
Steffi ignored the warning, watching with her heart in her mouth as Bryce swung his wheel and made contact with their vehicle before steering a sharp quarter turn into its side. The Russian let out another furious stream of curses as his car spun out and came to a stop.
“Stay here.”
Like that’s going to happen.
As he grabbed up his gun and leaped out of the car, Steffi slid the door on the opposite side open. The vehicle had come to rest at the edge of the highway, right at the point where the tarmac ended and the road sloped down to a steep wooded bank. Crouching low, she used the vehicle to shield herself from view as she slithered down the incline on her bottom. Her boots squelched into a narrow creek, and she bent almost double, following the muddy water away from the car as fast as she could. As she reached the shelter of a line of trees, she heard a single gunshot and bit back the cry that rose to her lips. If Bryce had been killed because of her...
For several heart-stopping minutes nothing happened. Not daring to risk leaving her hiding place, Steffi waited in silence for some clue to what had gone on.
Eventually, she heard footsteps and a voice called out, “Steffi? Where the hell are you?”
It was Bryce and this time she allowed the cry to escape her lips. She had intended to shout his name, but instead it came out as a strangled sob. Emerging from the trees and looking up the slope, she saw him at the top. Leaning down, he offered her his hand. Reaching for him, she twined her fingers into his and let him haul her up the bank. Glancing over at the Russian’s car several yards away, she saw her abductor writhing on the ground, clutching his left knee and groaning. Blood was seeping through his fingers and dripping onto the road.
Even though he was clearly in agony, he raised his head and glared at her. Through clenched teeth, he muttered a warning. “You think you can outrun the Big Guy? Think again, Stefanya.”
Steffi felt her own knees begin to wobble and was glad when Bryce slid his arm around her waist as he led her toward the Range Rover. “Let’s get out of here before someone calls the cops.”
* * *
“Damn.” Bryce felt the unmistakable drag on the wheel as he pulled out onto the highway.
“What is it?” Steffi slewed around in her seat. “Are we being followed?”
“No, we have a flat tire. It must have been damaged when I immobilized his vehicle.”
She made a sound that might have been the start of a hysterical laugh. It tailed away as she looked his way again. “Do we have to stop?”
In normal circumstances, Bryce would not have driven with a flat tire. He had no desire to run up a hefty repair bill, and he knew the damage he would do to the rim if he didn’t pull over and change the tire. But these circumstances were far from normal. Whatever was going on with Steffi, he had to get her away from a situation where these guys, whoever they were, could catch up with her again.
“Not yet. But I don’t understand why you won’t call the police.” Bryce looked across at Steffi as she returned to her huddled position low in the passenger seat. She looked like someone who was trying to disappear into herself. He had tossed her his phone as they got into the car, but all she had done was stare at it as if it was a coiled snake. “Don’t tell me you don’t know who those guys are.”
“If we call the police, I will have to tell them who I am.” Her voice was a quiet monotone. He got the feeling she had said those words many times, maybe just not out loud.
“You said you didn’t commit those murders.” Bryce kept his voice low, sensing she was close to a breaking point.
She pushed her curls back from her face with a hand that shook. “I didn’t, but you have no idea what I’m up against.”
“Tell me.” He risked glancing away from the road again and was shocked at the raw fear he saw on her face.
“Can we get off the highway first?”
“Steffi, that guy isn’t going to be moving anytime soon. There’s no way he’s following us.”
“He won’t be alone.” Those haunting eyes were wide with fear. “Please?”
Bryce gave it some thought. His house was on the opposite side of town, and he was seriously concerned about Steffi’s well-being if she stayed in the car much longer. She was walking a knife-edge between stability and hysteria, swaying precariously back and forth from one to the other. He had no idea what was going on, but it was clear she was scared half to death. He also had the issue of a shredded tire and an increasingly damaged rim to take into account.
They were driving along Lakeside Drive. On their left was Stillwater Lake, the huge body of water that bordered the city. His brother Cameron had a house here, a beautiful designer property that was tucked away in the trees above its own private lakefront view. Since his recent marriage, Cameron had moved into a sprawling ranch on the road out toward Park County. He and Laurie were restoring the old property and were planning to sell the lake house. It was so private, it should reassure Steffi that no one could find them. Once they were there, maybe she would be able to calm down and tell him what the hell was going on. His ribs gave a twinge. And maybe he could take a look at his injuries at the same time. That guy back at Steffi’s cabin had used his fists the way other people took a mallet to a fence post.
He turned the car off the highway and down a narrow, winding track that led between tall pine trees. Steffi eyed him suspiciously. “Where are we going?”
“My brother’s house.” Correctly interpreting her look of horror, he quickly attempted to reassure her. “Don’t worry, no one else will be there.”
Although she didn’t seem convinced, Steffi remained silent as he pulled up to the wrought iron gates, waiting while the sensor on his windshield opened them automatically. She glanced around her nervously, but seemed relieved when the gates closed behind them. The same sensor opened the double garage. As Bryce pulled into the gloomy interior, the fluorescent lighting kicked in. From there, they could mount an internal staircase into the house itself. Bryce had a key, and he also knew the code to the alarm system. He was convinced they hadn’t been followed, but he was keen to calm Steffi’s nerves by showing her he was taking her apprehension seriously. Pocketing the gun he had returned to the Range Rover’s glove box after shooting Steffi’s abductor, he led the way into the house.
The lake house was stunning, but its story was tragic and Bryce no longer felt comfortable in the beautiful glass-and-wood dwelling. It had been designed by Cameron’s former girlfriend, Carla, who had died on the lake. At the time it was believed it had been a boating accident. It was only recently it had emerged that she was one of the victims of the serial murderer known as the Red Rose Killer. The city, and the Delaney family in particular, were still reeling from the impact of that investigation. It was the reason Bryce drove around with a loaded gun in his glove box.
Steffi appeared not to notice her surroundings. As Bryce made coffee—adding several heaped spoons of sugar to her cup—she hugged her arms around her waist and gazed out of the full-length window. He took the drinks through to the large family room and set them on the glass-topped driftwood table. Although the weather was cool, he opened the glass doors that led out onto the deck, allowing the breeze to filter through from the lake. Sitting on one of the large, squishy sofas, he gestured for Steffi to join him. She perched stiffly on the edge, apparently poised for flight.
“I think it’s time you told me.” This situation was totally out of the scope of his experience, but he did his best to keep his voice gentle. He could only help her if he knew the truth.
Steffi was gnawing her lip so hard he thought she might bite right through it. “I don’t know where to start.”
“Just talk and let’s see where it takes us.”
She nodded decisively. “Greg Spence wasn’t my boyfriend. Everyone thought he was because we were so close. The press even speculated that we were about to get engaged. It made us laugh.” She took a deep breath, lifting her eyes to his face. “His real name was Gregori Anton, and he was my brother.”
Chapter 4 (#u4aa186bc-28f6-5553-bed8-42ac5f27d921)
“When I was born, my name was Stefanya Anton.” Bryce was right. Once she started talking, it became easier to keep going. Until now, Steffi hadn’t figured Bryce for someone who might be easy to confide in, but he surprised her. Her story wasn’t an easy one to tell, but it felt like he was really listening, rather than judging her.
“Our parents died when I was five and Greg was eight. We were placed with separate adoptive families and we lost touch. Although I became famous, he hadn’t recognized me from my movies. It was sheer coincidence that we met again. He had a minor part in one of my films. There was something about him—” she smiled reminiscently “—I couldn’t place what it was. Then, one day, I got something in my eye while we were shooting a scene together. He came to my assistance, saw my eyes and knew right away I was his sister. He remembered my cat’s eyes from when we were children.”
“But you let people believe you were an item?”
She bit her lip. This was the hard part. “There were reasons why we couldn’t tell anyone our true identity.”
Although he wasn’t judging her, it was clear Bryce wasn’t going to let that go. “You’re going to have to tell me all of it, Steffi. Two people are dead and I shot a man today to help you escape. If I’m going to help you, I need to know why.”
He was right, of course. It was just so hard to talk about something she’d kept locked up inside herself for so long. “Although we lived in America when our parents died, Greg and I were born in Russia.” She drew in a long breath. “Our father was involved in organized crime. More than involved. He was the leader of one of the largest gangs in Russia, and he brought his criminal activities with him to this country.”
There. She had said those words aloud. Words that had, until now, only been spoken between her and Greg. It was only recently, since their reunion, that they had pieced their story together, realizing with dawning horror who they were and what they had witnessed all those years ago.
Steffi watched Bryce’s face, waiting for his reaction. She was unsure what to expect. Disgust? Rage? Contempt? Any combination of those would be natural, she supposed. She was the daughter of one of the most notorious Russian mob bosses of all time. She herself was a wanted alleged killer who had tricked her way into Bryce’s employment. He was hardly likely to pat her arm and say it was all going to be okay. She bit back the sob that tried to rise in her throat. It was never going to be okay.
His expression remained carefully neutral. “Go on.”
“I was too young to remember much of my life before his death. Greg told me we moved to America when I was about three. My father was very wealthy, as you can imagine, and he had connections in high places.”
She thought back to that night. To the shouts and running footsteps. To her mother dragging Steffi and Greg from their beds and pushing them up the stairs to the attic, her whispered voice urging them to stay there.
“No matter what you see or hear.” Steffi could still hear the terror in her mother’s tone as she said those words.
They had huddled together, lifting the trapdoor that led from their parents’ bedroom to the attic space an inch or two while they watched the scene below...even though they didn’t want to see. Men had crowded into the room, all of them dressed in black. All of them with the tattooed eye on their right hands. Steffi hadn’t seen what happened to her mother, but she had pressed a hand to her mouth as they beat her father. Then another man had come into the room. A big man with dark hair. The atmosphere changed with his arrival. He didn’t have the tattoo, but he was in charge.
Steffi had known this man. He was her father’s friend. He visited their house often, bringing presents for her, and spending hours playing with her by the pool. Greg used to be jealous of the time this man spent with Steffi. He teased her and said she was the favorite. This man wouldn’t hurt them. Why, only a few days earlier, he had brought Steffi the doll she wanted. She had turned to smile at Greg in relief and saw his eyes widen in horror. A shot rang out and Steffi had looked back in time to see the big man lower his gun as her father’s body crumpled to the floor.
“Find the children.” His pleasant voice with an American accent had sounded different as he strode out of the room.
The men had started to search the house, and Steffi could still recall the choking sense of panic when two of them pointed up to the trapdoor. As one of them pulled up a chair and prepared to stand on it, police sirens could be heard approaching the house, and the other man cursed, pulling his friend by the arm; they both ran off.
“The police found us eventually. Mama had told us not to come down, so we didn’t,” Steffi said as she finished recounting this memory to Bryce. Tears sparkled on the ends of her lashes, but she blinked them away. “We told the police what we saw, but no one was ever convicted of the crime.”
“Didn’t you know his name? The man who pulled the trigger?”
“We knew him as our Uncle Waltz, although we had heard our father call him ‘Big Guy.’ The police couldn’t trace him from either of those names. Looking back, I’m not sure how hard they tried. My father wasn’t exactly a law-abiding citizen. Perhaps they were glad his murderer had put an end to the activities of his criminal organization.” She gave a rueful smile. “I went to my new home, became Steffi Grantham, had counseling, of course, and started a new life. Greg’s adoptive parents and mine tried to keep in touch for a while, but it was hard and eventually we lost contact with each other.”
“Until recently,” Bryce said.
“Yes.” Steffi felt a tiny, reminiscent smile touch her lips. “Our mother was an actress, and I suppose we both inherited the gene. It was all I ever wanted to do and it seems Greg was the same. The chances of us ending up on the same movie together were crazily remote, but we liked to think it was fate’s way of bringing us back together. Once we found each other again, we spent so much time together, the press invented this big romance and we decided it was easier to go along with it than tell the truth.”
A shadow passed over her features and Bryce observed it with a frown. “Tell me the rest, Steffi.”
“We talked about the way our parents died, of course. We were curious to find out why it happened. So we set about discovering exactly who our father really was. It wasn’t easy. Getting information about him from Russia was hard, and he had covered his tracks well, but we managed to piece enough together from a number of sources. It was a shock to learn just what he had been involved in.” Steffi turned to look directly at Bryce. “To learn that the father you loved did some horrible things...that’s not an easy discovery to make. But it got worse.” She covered her face with her hands as the memories came flooding back. “It got so much worse when we realized who the Big Guy was.”
* * *
Bryce fixed more coffee and finally delivered the toast he’d promised hours earlier. When Steffi shook her head, he tried for the authoritative tone Leon had used the previous day. “You have to start taking care of yourself. You’ve been ill and you haven’t eaten properly for days.”
He was worried about her. Those pictures in the celebrity magazines had shown a woman with a stunning figure. The Steffi he knew was thinner than the Hollywood actress they depicted. Now she had lost even more weight and her illness of the last few days had given her an air of fragility. Her cheek and collarbones jutted and her pale skin appeared almost translucent. Whatever ordeal Steffi had to face next, whether it involved the police and the media or more running, Bryce wondered if she would have the strength to deal with it.
Her story so far was a wild one, but he believed it. Although he hadn’t known Steffi very long, his gut told him she wasn’t a liar. That might sound like a bizarre claim to make since she had gotten a job in his company under false pretenses, but he was prepared to stake his honor on it. And his honor meant more to Bryce than anything.
His ribs were aching as he left Steffi begrudgingly nibbling on a slice of toast and made his way to the bathroom. Pulling his T-shirt over his shoulders was a painful process and, when he checked his reflection in the mirror, his sides were a patchwork of marks in varying shades of red, pink and purple. He winced as he felt his way around, but decided there were no bones broken. His body might be hurting, but his mind felt clearer than it had in a long time. When it had mattered most, the nightmares of flames and blood hadn’t intruded. The doubts and fears hadn’t held him back. He had done what he needed to do. He had gone to Steffi’s aid and fought the bad guys. It felt like he had defeated a monster. A monster that had lived inside him for a long time.
Opening the medicine cabinet, he rummaged around for the salve he knew Laurie kept in there. He remembered her talking about the natural remedy she had purchased at the monthly farmers’ market in Stillwater and about how well it worked on bruising and swelling. Taking the salve and a roll of bandage back into the family room, he presented them to Steffi. She regarded him with raised brows.
“I can’t reach all the way around to get this stuff on my back. And, if I try to put my own dressing on, I’ll look like I’ve been engaging in a bondage ritual.”
Although she attempted a smile, Steffi’s lip trembled slightly as she viewed his injuries. “I wouldn’t have dragged you into this for anything.”
“Just tell me you really do have a commercial driver’s license, and you haven’t been driving my trucks around illegally these last few months,” he said, shivering slightly as her fingertips connected with his flesh and she began to smooth the salve over his bruises.
“Of course I have one.” She glanced up from her task, her expression indignant. “Vincente checked out my qualifications when he employed me.”
His curiosity was aroused by her words and he thought again how little he knew of her. “Why would a Hollywood actress need a CDL?”
“I had to play a truck driver in one of my movies and, although the actual driving was done by a stunt driver, I wanted to make the close-ups look realistic. So I got a license.”
That statement summed Steffi up, Bryce decided. It told him more about her than anything else. It epitomized the determined, unyielding, downright bullheaded way she approached the world. Knowing something of her story, he now knew where that came from. There were still so many things he needed to ask her. There was the whole story about the murders. His instinct from the start had been to believe Steffi when she said she hadn’t murdered Greg Spence and the woman who was with him. It was hard to say why. He barely knew her, but he knew he trusted her. She might drive him crazy on a daily basis, but he had never once doubted her integrity. She hadn’t told the truth about who she was when she came to work for him, but she hadn’t lied, either. She had simply hidden her identity. Once she told him Greg was her brother—with genuine love and grief in those amazing eyes—he had known for sure she wasn’t responsible for the deaths. Even so, she still had a lot of explaining to do.
“If you didn’t kill them, why did you run?”
“I found their bodies.” There was a haunted look in her eyes. “And, just before I did, I saw a man with a tattoo on the back of his hand leaving the elevator in Greg’s apartment building. It was the same tattoo I’d seen on the hands of the men who killed my parents. The same one that was on the man who broke into my cabin today.” Her voice trembled on something close to a sob. “I panicked and ran.”
There were other questions battling for supremacy, and, as Steffi’s soothing fingers continued to apply the salve, Bryce struggled to make sense of and prioritize them. Why had she fled? Why had she come to Stillwater? Who were the men who had pursued her—Bryce had heard an accent and a smattering of a language he didn’t know. He had guessed Eastern European and knew now it was Russian—and how had they found her?
In the end, as Steffi wound the bandage around his waist, he went for the question that seemed the least important, but the one that, for some reason, really mattered. “Should I still call you Steffi?”
She paused, her hand resting on his abdomen. Her touch sent a shimmer of heat through to his nerve endings. It felt a lot like arousal, but that couldn’t be right. How totally out of place would that be in this situation? And anyway, this was Steffi. He might like sparring with her; she might be the only person who could hold his attention for longer than five minutes these days, but did that mean he felt something for her? And if he did, he should shake that aside fast. His head and his heart were in such an almighty mess that neither of them was in any state to consider sharing their contents with another person.
In spite of everything, there was a hint of mischief in Steffi’s eyes as she smiled. “My full name is Stefanya. I use Anya as my stage name, but my family—and my friends, the few I have—have always called me Steffi.”
“Do I qualify as a friend?” He didn’t know why, but it was important to know the answer to that question.
The smile changed and he got a glimpse of full-on Hollywood charm. It nearly knocked him off his feet. “Engaging in a car chase and shooting the bad guy for me? I think you qualify.”
Steffi finished winding the bandage around his torso and neatly tied the ends. Bryce shifted from side to side. It wasn’t comfortable, but hopefully it would help him heal. “I’ll get one of Cameron’s T-shirts and then you can tell me the rest of the story.”
Steffi nodded, her smile vanishing and nervousness taking its place. He turned away, intending to make his way to the bedroom...just as the front door came crashing in.
* * *
The three men who burst through the door clearly meant business. Bryce sprang into action, reaching for the gun he had placed on the table. Before his fingers could close over the butt, one of the intruders aimed a kick at his head. Steffi heard the sickening crunch of a boot connecting with Bryce’s skull and watched in horror as her only hope crumpled to the floor.
“Shall I finish him off?” The man who had kicked him spoke with a pronounced Russian accent as he trained his gun hopefully on Bryce’s unconscious form. Steffi recognized him as the giant, tattooed intruder who had burst into her cabin and been in the process of dragging her down the hall when Bryce had knocked him out. The darkening bruise on his chin confirmed it. Her heart thudded uncomfortably as she waited for a response to his question.
“No.” The man who answered him had a shaved head and an air of authority. There was barely a trace of an accent when he continued. “The Big Guy doesn’t like it when people he knows nothing about get involved in his business. He’ll want to ask this guy some questions before you get to put a bullet in his brain and throw him in the lake.”
Even though the future didn’t sound hopeful for Bryce, it was a reprieve. Of sorts. Steffi began to slowly back up toward a side table on which a large piece of rose-colored quartz was the centerpiece. If she could just get her hand around that chunk of mineral...
The man who was in charge turned his attention to her. Like his companions, he had the tattooed eye on the back of his right hand.
“You have led us on quite a chase, Stefanya. Yuri has a bullet in his knee courtesy of your friend here. Luckily, he was able to notice you had a flat tire as you drove off. We followed the shredded rubber and the marks your rims made on the asphalt. They led us right here.” He shook his head with mock sadness. “The Big Guy is not happy at the delay.” He signaled to his companions. “Erik, pick up the guy, get him in the car. Sergei, bring Stefanya. Let’s get moving. No more screwups.”
Erik was the huge man who had kicked Bryce. He tucked his gun into the waistband of his pants. Placing his hands under Bryce’s armpits, he began to drag him across the floor toward the door. Sergei, who until now had remained in the background, made a move toward Steffi. Even as her instincts for self-preservation went into overdrive, her fear for Bryce’s well-being kicked up a notch. She wanted to run to him and check he was okay, to shove the thug who was hauling him aside and cradle his head against her breast. The tender feelings welling up inside her were new, unexpected and highly inconvenient.
As Sergei reached out a hand to grab her, Steffi ducked under his arm. He called her an unflattering name and moved in closer. Steffi came up to one side of him, grabbed the piece of quartz and swung the heavy object into the side of his head. It made a satisfying crunch as it connected with his temple. He staggered backward from the impact, clutching a hand to his head as blood blossomed between his fingers. It bought Steffi a few precious seconds, but as she darted toward the open glass doors that led to the deck, she heard him coming after her.
When she reached the deck rail, she turned, taking Sergei by surprise as she gripped the wood with her hands and used it to support her weight. The years of dance training she had engaged in during her time at performing arts school came to her aid and, springing up with the full power of her body behind her, she kicked Sergei in the groin with both feet. He dropped onto the deck like a stone.
She didn’t have time to waste on feelings of gratification. The leader of the group burst through the door seconds later, gun in hand. There was only one way for Steffi to go. It was a long way down, but the alternative didn’t bear thinking about. Taking a deep breath, she placed both hands on the deck rail and vaulted over, propelling her body outward to avoid the jagged rocks.
As she landed on the pebbly lakeside beach, her left foot turned at an awkward angle and she gave a sharp cry of mingled pain and dismay. Struggling to her feet, she attempted to break into a run. It was impossible. Sharp, screaming agony shot from her ankle right up through her calf. She closed her eyes and swallowed hard. She couldn’t even walk. With a sob of frustration, she sank back down onto the pebbles.
“Go down there and get her.” There was a note of smug pleasure in the leader’s voice as it drifted down from the deck above her. “And Sergei?”
“Yes, boss?”
“Try not to screw up this time.”
Chapter 5 (#u4aa186bc-28f6-5553-bed8-42ac5f27d921)
Bryce felt like he was crawling through a long, dark tunnel. Getting to the other side was taking too much time and effort. His head hurt like hell and the closer he got to the end of the tunnel, the more it hurt. Maybe he should just give up. Staying inside the tunnel wouldn’t be so bad, would it? He couldn’t remember why he wanted to get out, but something nagged at him. There was a reason why he had to get out. An important one.
He could hear voices, but they were fading in and out of his consciousness in a peculiar manner, like a radio with an intermittent signal. One of them was familiar and he focused his attention on that one. It was a woman and she was doing what she did best. She was arguing. There was only one woman he knew who was that skilled at disagreeing.
Steffi. His memory came back to him in a rush and with it came the impulse to let loose with his fists. He guessed, from the pain in his head, that any attempt to put up a fight right now would get him another trip straight back into that dark tunnel of unconsciousness. He stayed where he was, lying on his side in the back seat of a fast-moving vehicle. The driver was cutting corners, swinging wildly, with an occasional squeal of tires adding to the cinematic car-chase effect.
He had no idea where they were going, but at least he and Steffi were both alive. For now.
Through his half-open eyes, Bryce could see the driver. His shaved head was the giveaway. Bryce had a vague memory of him being the first one through the busted-down door of the lake house. Next to him was another of the thugs who had been with him. In the seconds before he lost consciousness, there had been enough time for Bryce to take in the details of his appearance. Bryce couldn’t turn his head, but he knew Steffi was next to him from the amount of squirming and complaining that was going on. From the occasional exasperated grunt he could hear, he figured the third guy was on Steffi’s other side. That must be the muscular guy who had kicked Bryce in the head, the same one who had been in Steffi’s cabin.
“Can’t you shut her up?” The man in the passenger seat turned his head and Bryce caught a glimpse of congealed blood on the side of his head. He was seized by a fierce sense of pride. It was obvious Steffi hadn’t succumbed to this abduction without a fight.
“Like you did, you mean? You got whacked around the head with a rock and kicked in the balls.” The man on Steffi’s other side snarled the words. “I sure as hell wish I could find a way to shut her up.”
Bryce could have told them they were wasting their time. He’d known Steffi for three months and he’d never found a way to silence her once she got started. If they ever got out of this, he made a promise. He would never again make the attempt.
“And another thing.” Steffi bumped against Bryce’s leg as she struggled against the man who held her. “My DNA will be all over the coffee cup in that house at the lake. You do know I’m the most-wanted woman in the country, right? Now Sergei’s blood is in that house, as well. It won’t take the police long to link you to me.”
The driver said something in Russian. Although Bryce had no idea what it was, it sounded a lot like a curse. “She’s right.” He half turned to look at Steffi. “Who owns that house?”
Bryce lifted his foot and pressed it down on Steffi’s in a warning gesture. It was the lightest of touches, but she squealed so loud he almost started upright in shock.
“What in God’s name is wrong with you now?” It was clear Steffi was seriously testing the driver’s patience.
“My foot hurts.”
“Maybe you should have thought of that before you jumped off that deck.” He suspected the man’s response involved gritted teeth.
Bryce’s admiration for Steffi kicked up a notch higher. She’d jumped from the lake house deck? If he wasn’t pretending to be unconscious he’d have given an admiring whistle. That must have taken some guts. He was finding out that one thing Steffi had in abundance was courage.
“Where are you taking me?” She was back to haranguing her abductors.
“We told you, Stefanya. The Big Guy wants to talk to you.”
“There was no need for all this fuss.” She really was amazing. Her tone of voice was that of a schoolteacher scolding a group of naughty pupils. “Why do you think I came to Stillwater? It isn’t some random place I chose by sticking a pin in a map. I’ve been trying to get to see him. You should tell him to try coming home more often.”
Bryce tried to process what she had just said. There was a lot of information in those few sentences. Steffi’s words implied that this “big guy” they kept talking about lived in Stillwater. How was that possible? Bryce’s hometown might be the county seat, but it was still a small city in West County, Wyoming. Stillwater was a place where everyone knew everyone else. He had complained more than once, when he had been subjected to the scrutiny of the local gossips, that everybody knew a little too much about each other’s business. Bryce did a mental review of his acquaintances. Not one of them struck him as the sort of person likely to be involved with Russian organized crime.
“No one tells the Big Guy what to do.”
A slowing in the car’s pace and a change in the road surface signaled that they had left the highway. Bryce’s years of driving army vehicles came in handy and he judged they were on a gravel drive of some sort. When they halted, he did some quick thinking. His cell phone was in the front pocket of his jeans. If his captors found it—and, let’s face it, if he kept it on him, they were going to find it—he would give them everything. His identity, his contacts...his family. He had to find a way to get rid of that phone. Fast.
When they came for him and began to drag him out of the car, he opened his eyes and took a look at his surroundings. The unusual, intricately styled mansion built at the base of a mountain told him what he needed to know. With its quirky architecture and rolling gardens, Woodland Lodge was instantly recognizable. The Big Guy’s identity was no longer a mystery. It was a shock, but it wasn’t a mystery.
“Sleeping Beauty is awake, is he?” Sergei’s voice grated on Bryce’s nerves. “Good. That means I don’t have to carry you.”
There was an ornate pond and an elaborate arrangement of fountains in the marble courtyard in front of the house. There. Bryce needed to get to that pond. As Sergei, his hand clamped around Bryce’s upper arm, marched him past it, Bryce made a performance of staggering and falling, using the action to fumble his cell phone from his pocket into the palm of his hand. With a snarl, Sergei dragged him to his knees. Bryce put out his hand as if to use the marble surrounding the pond to help pull himself up from kneeling to standing. There was only the tiniest plop as he slid his cell phone into the water.
He breathed a sigh of relief and allowed Sergei to manhandle him the rest of the way inside the house that belonged to Walter Sullivan, billionaire businessman and aspiring senator.
Walter owned several factories in Wyoming and retail outlets throughout the country. He was one of the biggest employers in Stillwater. Born and bred in the city, he was fond of boasting about how he liked to give some of his wealth back to his hometown. Bryce hadn’t heard anything about his involvement with Russian gangs, but he had heard it wasn’t a good idea to get on the wrong side of Walter.
Which didn’t make his and Steffi’s future seem a whole lot brighter.
* * *
When Steffi had run from Greg’s apartment after she found the bodies, her only thought had been to keep running and find a place where she could hide forever. She had returned from filming in Italy the day before and the purse she carried still contained her passport and driver’s license with the name of Steffi Grantham—which was, of course, her real name—some cash, and the card for her checking account.
For the next few days, she had used the card to withdraw the maximum amount of cash. Once she knew she was the main suspect in the murders, she disposed of it in case it could be used to trace her.
Sitting in a cheap motel, hacking at her hair with shaking hands, she had finally drawn a breath and stopped to think. Fear was still her overriding emotion, but anger had started to creep in. Was she going to live with this feeling for the rest of her life? Look over her shoulder every minute of every day? Or was she going to take this fight to the man who had started it and bring it to an end...one way or another?
Her decision made this meeting the ultimate irony. She had come to Stillwater intending to see Walter Sullivan on her terms. When she and Greg had realized the identity of the man they used to call Uncle Waltz, they had been stunned.
Although Steffi’s adoptive parents lived in Sheridan, Wyoming, she had moved to Los Angeles six years ago. And she really didn’t pay much attention to politics. It had been Greg who had found the article about Walter Sullivan, the Wyoming businessman who was predicted to sweep his way to a seat in the national Senate.
They had both stared at the accompanying photograph in horror. He was a little grayer at the temples, had a few more lines around his eyes. But there was no question about it. Walter Sullivan and Uncle Waltz were the same person. Then Greg had been killed by a man with an eye tattooed onto the back of his right hand and Steffi’s world had been turned upside down.
Am I next? That was the first of the many questions Steffi wanted to ask Walter. Maybe coming to Stillwater and planning to meet with him in private wasn’t the smartest move, but it was the only one she could live with. She could run, but she couldn’t outdistance the nightmares.
When she’d fled, she hadn’t run from Walter. She’d run to him. Her biggest fear had been that his men would find her and kill her before she could look him in the eye and demand to know why.
For the last three months she had driven out this way every few days, studying his unconventional mansion for signs that its owner was in residence. There had been nothing. The place had been closed up, the gates locked, the windows shuttered on the outside. Impatiently, she had followed his whereabouts on social media, hoping to discover his intentions. Walter relentlessly documented his progress on various sites and he had not stepped foot in Stillwater throughout the time Steffi had been in the city. Since he had announced his intention to run for a Wyoming seat, he had traveled all over the state. One of the few places he hadn’t been was his hometown. Possibly he believed his popularity there was so great he would win without too much campaigning. The media and polls seemed to agree with him.
Now, instead of putting into practice her plan to sneak into the house and confront Walter on her own terms, Steffi was being carried through the front door by a thunder-faced Erik. Behind them, Sergei was dragging Bryce along with him. The bald man, who clearly had some sort of seniority within the group, strode on ahead of them. Steffi risked a brief glance in Bryce’s direction. A vivid bruise was already standing out on one side of his face and he looked pale, but, as she gazed at him, one eyelid drooped ever so slightly into a wink. It was just enough to give her waning spirits a boost. She didn’t know why it should. They were hopelessly outnumbered, in the hands of a group of murderous thugs, and about to be brought before the ruthless killer responsible for the murders of her parents and brother. Even if she was able to escape, she couldn’t run anywhere on her injured ankle. She very much doubted she could walk. But somehow that tiny gesture from Bryce mattered. It told her she wasn’t alone. It gave her a glimmer of hope.
That glimmer lasted about as long as it took for Erik to march into a luxurious dining room and deposit her on her feet beside a vast mahogany table. In acknowledgment of the cooler weather, a fire blazed in the huge grate. Heavy, full-length crimson drapes had been pulled across the windows, giving the disconcerting effect that night had fallen, even though it was afternoon.
Steffi winced as her injured ankle protested at the sensation of bearing any weight. Sergei shoved Bryce through the door so that he stood next to her. While Erik remained in the room, Sergei, walking with the delicate gait of a man in some discomfort, left.
The man sitting at the head of the table pushed aside an empty plate, wiped his lips with a snow-white napkin and regarded them from beneath hooded lids. Walter Sullivan was one of the most famous men in the state. His business interests, the factories and retail outlets he owned all over the country, raised him to the status of a celebrity, and his charitable giving had made him hugely popular. His darkly handsome features had graced television news programs and newspaper spreads almost daily in the past twelve months. His rise to prominence and his recent campaign had been stylish and intelligent. This was a man who was destined for greatness. Even though he was just beginning his campaign for the Senate, his name was regularly mentioned in connection with a possible future presidency. Now that Greg was gone, Steffi seemed to be the only person who knew what lurked behind that charming exterior.
It scared her that she was the only thing standing between Walter and the political power he wanted, but she wasn’t going to let that fear show through. Tilting her chin, she met his gaze bravely. He had unusually dark eyes. It made reading his expression difficult. The last time Steffi had looked into those eyes, she had called this man Uncle Waltz. What frightened her more than anything was that he was regarding her with the same amused, affectionate smile she had seen from him all those years ago.
“You have caused me a great deal of inconvenience, Stefanya.” Walter’s voice expressed the same mild irritation with which he would rebuke a troublesome child. She had heard his voice on TV recently, but being in the same room as him, hearing those cultured tones up close...that was what took her right back to the night he’d murdered her parents. It took every ounce of her strength to keep from screaming.
“You killed my brother.” She was pleased with the way the words came out clearly, betraying no trace of the nervousness she felt. “I wasn’t in the mood to make things easy for you.”
Something shifted in the depths of Walter’s eyes. Something dangerous. Something she guessed he wouldn’t want the voters to see. It was gone in an instant, to be replaced immediately by the public smile he showed the world.
“I haven’t got time to waste sparring with you. Where is the cell phone?”
Steffi took a moment to consider the question. Her heart was pounding uncomfortably, causing the pulse in her throat to hammer wildly. It was an unpleasant choking feeling. She had no idea what he was talking about. She knew nothing about any cell phone, but she sensed giving Walter that piece of information might not be the smartest move she could make right then.
“Why should I tell you that?”
“Because you have no idea how much I can hurt you if you don’t.” Next to her, Bryce made an impulsive movement in Walter’s direction, only to be stopped short as Erik caught hold of him by his upper arms. Walter turned his attention to Bryce, his eyes narrowing. “Ah, yes. We’ll discuss your involvement later. But first we need to return to the subject of Gregori’s cell phone. What have you done with it?”
Although Steffi might not know why he was so focused on Greg’s cell, she sensed she may be able to use its existence to her advantage. “It’s safe.”
“Where?” Walter’s voice was silky. That silkiness made her shiver.
It was a long shot, but she decided to go for it. “If I told you that, you wouldn’t have any reason to keep me alive, would you?” While she was being brave, she decided it was time to ask the question that had haunted her since she was five. “Why did you kill my parents?”
He seemed to debate whether to answer her, then he shrugged. “I first met your father when I visited Russia about a year before your birth. Our friendship and business partnership continued after your parents moved to America. Aleksander Anton was the leader of the Sglaz, one of the most feared criminal organizations in the world. But he made a big mistake when he tried to cheat me.”
Steffi frowned. “If the men with the eye tattoo were in the Sglaz, why were they working for you on the night you killed my parents? Why do they still work for you now?”
“Money, Stefanya. Your father thought he could double-cross me, but I was one step ahead of him.”
“And my mother?” It hurt to ask, to remember her mother urging her and Greg up the attic stairs that night, but she had come this far. She had to know.
For the first time, Walter appeared shaken out of his calm. Steffi thought she saw a glimmer of emotion in his eyes. “Ekaterina was...” He shook his head. “No. No more. This is ancient history.”
“Did you kill her because she could identify you?”
Walter gave a harsh laugh. “You know nothing about my motives, Stefanya, but you and your brother are two of a kind. He made his first mistake when he recognized me in Los Angeles. He should have had more sense, walked away, let the past lie. He had no idea what he was dealing with. Instead, he insisted on a meeting.”
It took every ounce of Steffi’s acting ability to listen to what he was saying and not allow the surprise she was feeling to show. At the start of her career, she had spent a season traveling the country, working in masked theater, an old tradition that was rarely performed by modern actors. The experience had taught her how to hide her emotions behind a blank expression. Even so, her thoughts were raging out of control. A meeting? What had Greg been thinking of?
“You agreed to meet him.” She managed to keep her voice level, midway between a question and a statement. It seemed safe to assume Walter had met with Greg.
His face contorted as if a twinge of pain had caught him unawares. “He told me he had proof I was guilty of murder. Even though I was sure he was bluffing, I wasn’t going to take a chance. When we met, it turned out I was right. The proof he was talking about was his own memory. I couldn’t believe his nerve. He started rambling about Aleksander and Ekaterina, talking about my men and the tattooed eye on their right hands, talking about what happened that night when your parents died. As if I was an idiot who couldn’t remember every detail of my own life. And he assumed I was still involved with Russian organized crime. My involvement with your father was my first and only foray into that world. Even though our partnership made me billions, I was never tempted to repeat it. Your father’s men may work for me now, but they are my security guards, not my gang members.” Walter shook his head, clearly still struggling to believe Greg’s audacity. “That was your brother’s second mistake. It was only later he sent me a message to let me know he had been recording that conversation on his cell phone.”
Slowly, Steffi exhaled the breath she had been holding. So that was what this was all about. That recording was the key to all of this. It was the reason Greg and the mystery girl he was with had died. “That recording confirmed everything.”
Walter’s lips twisted into an unpleasant smile that told her all she needed to know. Walter’s ego was so huge he had responded to Greg’s questions truthfully. Maybe he had even boasted about what had happened all those years ago when he killed their parents. A horrible sick feeling squirmed low in Steffi’s stomach.

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